"Sorry, sir, you didn't ask me," was the toneless reply. The doctor looked unutterable things, and the lighted end of his cigar described three or four irregular circles. "Gosh!" he pronounced briskly. "We gotta put more pep into looking for this dog, or the war'll end before we find him." A high-velocity shell bursting on the near side of the factory helped to decide us. The A.P.M. said that a party of the Pioneers had marched down the street half an hour ago. The doctor and I bade him good-bye, went through the village, and were directed to a lane alongside a railway embankment. In one among a row of wooden huts, where the Headquarters of the reserve infantry brigade were quartered, we found the colonel of the Pioneers finishing lunch. He and our colonel were old friends, and immediately I explained the object of my visit he became sympathetic. "Yes," he laughed, "we have your dog--at least our A Company have him. I believe they found him wandering on the other side of the valley.... Stop and have some lunch, and I'll send for him." "No, thank you, sir.... I shall have to be getting back." A subaltern went off to fetch the dog. The doctor left to pick up the horses and to return to the waggon line. The colonel invited me to have a drink. But there was disappointment when the subaltern returned. "I'm afraid the dog has gone again, sir--about half an hour ago." "Really!" said the colonel. "Yes, sir; he was in A Company's mess when two Gunner officers passed, and he went after them." "He knows your badge, at any rate," remarked the colonel to me with twinkling eyes. "I'm sorry you've had your journey for nothing. But we'll keep a look-out and send him back if he returns to us." "I'm going to have another search round the village before I go back, sir," I responded determinedly. "We're getting warmer." Turning from the lane into the road that led into the village, I noticed a groom who had been waiting with his two horses since the first time I passed the spot. At first he thought he hadn't seen a dog that looked like a cross between an Airedale and a Belgian sheep-dog. Then he fancied he had. Yes, he believed it had passed that way with an R.A.M.C. major. "But those men near that ambulance car will tell you, sir. They were playing with the dog I saw, about half an hour ago." Yes, I was really on the trail now. "That's right, sir," remarked the R.A.M.C. sergeant when he had helped two walking wounded into the ambulance car. "I remember the dog, and saw the name on the collar.... He followed our major about twenty minutes ago. He's gone across that valley to Brigade Headquarters.... I don't think he'll be long." "What's it like up there?" asked one of the ambulance men of a slight, fagged-looking lance-corporal of the Fusiliers, who had been hit in the shoulder. "Hot!" replied the Fusilier. "One dropped near Battalion Headquarters and killed our sergeant.... I think there are five more of our lot coming along."